CNN)Republican Sen. Rand Paul objected Wednesday to an attempt to pass the bill funding 9/11 first responders' health care unanimously, arguing that passing such a long-term bill without offsetting the cost would contribute to the national debt.

"It has long been my feeling that we need to address our massive debt in this country -- we have a $22 trillion debt, we're adding debt at about a trillion dollars a year," he said. "And therefore any new spending that we are approaching, any new program that's going to have the longevity of 70, 80 years, should be offset by cutting spending that's less valuable."

"We need to at the very least have this debate. I will be offering up an amendment if this bill should come to the floor, but until then I will object," added Paul, who voted in favor of President Donald Trump's $1.5 trillion tax cut. That tax cut is helping drive a deficit increase.

CNN)Republican Sen. Rand Paul objected Wednesday to an attempt to pass the bill funding 9/11 first responders' health care unanimously, arguing that passing such a long-term bill without offsetting the cost would contribute to the national debt.

"It has long been my feeling that we need to address our massive debt in this country -- we have a $22 trillion debt, we're adding debt at about a trillion dollars a year," he said. "And therefore any new spending that we are approaching, any new program that's going to have the longevity of 70, 80 years, should be offset by cutting spending that's less valuable."

"We need to at the very least have this debate. I will be offering up an amendment if this bill should come to the floor, but until then I will object," added Paul, who voted in favor of President Donald Trump's $1.5 trillion tax cut. That tax cut is helping drive a deficit increase.

Says the asshole that passed a trillion dollar tax cut for the rich and corporations without an offset.

Wealthy financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein continued to have visits from young women that allegedly resulted in sexual liaisons while he was in 'jail' in Florida, a lawyer for one of his accusers said Tuesday.

Attorney Brad Edwards, who represents Epstein accuser Courtney Wild and several other alleged victims, claims that Epstein's 13-month jail sentence -- the result of a plea bargain with federal prosecutors in Florida -- failed to prevent the money manager accused of sexually assaulting numerous underage girls from having "improper sexual contact" with young women.

At a Tuesday press conference in New York, Edwards said that a recent newspaper article -- citing a Palm Beach County sheriff's deputy -- described Epstein as a "model prisoner" during his jail term in West Palm Beach in 2008 after he pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution in a deal with federal prosecutors that was kept hidden Epstein's alleged victims.

Accompanied by some of Puerto Rico’s most famous performers, thousands of people marched to the governor’s residence in San Juan on Wednesday chanting demands for the embattled governor, Ricardo Rosselló, to resign after the leak of online chats that show him making misogynistic slurs and mocking his constituents.

The crowd ranged from teenagers to retirees, with some waving the island’s flag printed in black and gray rather than red, white and blue to symbolize their discontent with a government they call corrupt and unresponsive to its people. Musicians Ricky Martin, Residente and Bad Bunny marched and addressed the crowd.

CNN)Republican Sen. Rand Paul objected Wednesday to an attempt to pass the bill funding 9/11 first responders' health care unanimously, arguing that passing such a long-term bill without offsetting the cost would contribute to the national debt.

"It has long been my feeling that we need to address our massive debt in this country -- we have a $22 trillion debt, we're adding debt at about a trillion dollars a year," he said. "And therefore any new spending that we are approaching, any new program that's going to have the longevity of 70, 80 years, should be offset by cutting spending that's less valuable."

"We need to at the very least have this debate. I will be offering up an amendment if this bill should come to the floor, but until then I will object," added Paul, who voted in favor of President Donald Trump's $1.5 trillion tax cut. That tax cut is helping drive a deficit increase.

A few folk question this very public display of plutocratic piety, but we are of course professional malcontents. Some of Paris’s 3,600 rough sleepers protest at how so many euros can be found for a new cathedral roof yet not a cent to put a roof over their heads – still, what do the poor know of the sublime? From all other seats, the applause is deafening. “Billionaires can sometimes come in really handy,” remarks the editor of Moneyweek. “Everybody is at our bedside,” says French TV celeb Stéphane Bern. Flush with cash, French president Emmanuel Macron vows the gothic masterpiece will be rebuilt within five years. Front pages scored, studio hours filled, the world moves on. You almost certainly haven’t heard the rest of the story – yet you should, because it comes with one hell of a twist.

Weeks go by, then months, and Notre Dame sees nothing from the billionaires. The promises of mid-April seem to have been forgotten by mid-June. “The big donors haven’t paid. Not a cent,” a senior official at the cathedral tells journalists. Far humbler sums are sent in, from far poorer individuals. “Beautiful gestures,” says one charity executive, but hardly les grands prix.

That prompts a newswire story, after which two of the wealthy donors, the Arnault and Pinault families, stump up €10m each. Followed by silence. Questions I put this week to the various donors and charities went largely unanswered. (Perhaps their offices are busy or emptied out by the summer holidays.)

But for now, let’s call this the Parable of the Disappearing Billionaires – a tale that goes to the heart of much that is wrong with modern philanthropy. Whether dispensed by the Sacklers of opioid fame, or sponsored by BP at the British Museum, it often comes on the terms and timelines of the wealthy, with the epic generosity hiding a much harder bargain.

At the time of the fire near the Seine, you could barely move for expressions of cashmere-clad concern. Take the family and foundation behind L’Oréal, who at the time declared how “touched” they were “by this drama that unites beyond cultures and beliefs [and] intend to take part in the collective effort and talents needed to meet this immense challenge, which touches the heart of our country”. As of mid-June, they had handed over a big fat zero. The same goes for oil giant Total.

“It is more blessed to give than to receive,” said Jesus. To which anyone surveying the Notre Dame debacle might advise the son of God to get a better brand manager. Because the billionaires who promised those vast sums have received all the credit while not giving more than a fraction of the money.

It might have been the first-ever nationalist revolt launched from a Ritz-Carlton ballroom. This week, conservative intellectuals and politicos in Washington tucked into plated dinners and sipped from at least four varieties of seltzer at a new gathering, the National Conservatism Conference. In defiance of conservative-movement shibboleths, they applauded new rallying cries: No more worshipping at the altar of free markets at the expense of the middle class. No more endless wars dedicated to slaying perceived monsters overseas. No more shame about saluting the flag, defending borders, and demanding assimilation. “Today,” declared Yoram Hazony, the American-educated Israeli scholar who organized the event, “is our independence day.”

The featured speakers included a fair number of strange bedfellows. Christopher DeMuth, the former longtime head of the American Enterprise Institute, or AEI, who helped establish the think tank’s free-market, small government, anti-regulation bona fides, was the unofficial chairman of their steering committee; Rusty Reno, the editor of the religious journal First Things, was also closely involved. John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser who is known for his hawkishness, shared a stage with Tucker Carlson, the Fox News pundit who has fashioned himself a spokesperson for pro-Trump anti-interventionism, and whose prime-time show has been denigrated by liberal critics as the “white supremacy power hour.”

Carlson mocked what he described as the progressive obsession with supposed racism: “It’s such a boring subject,” he said. “It’s such a dead end. It can’t be fixed; it can’t be changed.” Somewhere in the audience, a man yelled “Hear! Hear!” Racism: This charge, more than any other, loomed awkwardly throughout the conference. The president, whose time in office has produced a long trail of racist remarks, spent the early part of this week tweeting about how four freshmen congresswomen of color should “go back” to “the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” even though they are all American citizens. The House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning his statements as racist.

Hazony took pains to draw the boundary between nationalism and white nationalism, both before and after the conference. He barred the participation of Peter Brimelow, the editor of the white-supremacist website VDARE, and several others in Brimelow’s orbit, inviting a barrage of anti-Semitic criticism. During the conference’s first day, Hazony warned the group not to underestimate the appeal of white nationalism: “If you think it’s just a tiny periphery, you’re looking in the wrong place,” he said. Other speakers went so far as to censure the president. “We have to push back against Donald Trump when he does things to increase that breach between the right and African Americans,” said Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, during one session. “He’s got to avoid unforced and idiotic errors.” And yet the conference was relentlessly focused on immigration and assimilation, with repeated calls to protect the English language and, in at least one case, favor whites over nonwhites.

In a panel on immigration, University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax claimed that immigrants are too loud and responsible for an increase in “litter.” She explicitly advocated an immigration policy that would favor immigrants from Western countries over non-Western ones; “the position,” as she put it, “that our country will be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites.” (She claims this is not racist because her problem with nonwhite immigrants is cultural rather than biological.)

I increasingly feel like it is fair to refer to Movement Conservatism as broadly being an ethnationalist movement now.

For the past two years, Virginia-based immigration attorney Hassan Ahmad has fought the University of Michigan in court to unseal the personal papers of a small-town ophthalmologist named John Tanton so that all Americans can learn about his legacy.

Instead of making his mark in the medical field, Tanton became the unlikely architect of the modern-day anti-immigration movement in the United States through founding and funding propositions, nonprofits, activists and publications on a local and national level over the past 40 years.

The proposals championed by Tanton’s network — end birthright citizenship, drastically reduce legal immigration, build a wall on the U.S-Mexico border, criminalize illegal immigration, oppose sanctuary cities, severely limit asylum eligibility, limit the use of foreign languages, and cast the issues as a fight about culture — have dominated American political discourse over the last quarter-century. And they’re a key policy plank for President Trump as he gears up for the 2020 presidential campaign.

Tanton died Tuesday after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. He was 85.

“For John, the big reward was to see a number of the organizations he helped conceive grow into tall oaks — guiding and shaping the public discourse in history-changing ways,” read a statement from Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), one of the groups Tanton created.

Ahmad agreed.

“It sends chills down your spine,” Ahmad said. “I think if he knew how influential his ideas were, he died with a smile on his face.”

...

In research, Tanton came across statistics showing an increase in immigration after the passage of the 1965 Immigration Reform Act, which had lifted measures that favored immigrants from Europe over those from Asia and Latin America. He suggested to fellow conservationists and birth-control zealots that limiting immigration was an easy way to curtail population growth and save the environment, only to meet resistance.

“It was a forbidden topic,” Tanton said in an interview for an oral history decades later. “I tried to get some others to think about it and write about it, but I did not succeed. I finally concluded that if anything was going to happen, I would have to do it myself.”

In 1979, he founded FAIR, which has since worked with municipalities and states to craft laws that crack down on undocumented immigrants.

Tanton used its success as a template to create other organizations that would focus on specific angles to fight immigration. Numbers USA became the populist front, tasked with mobilizing phone calls and protests against any politician deemed sympathetic to undocumented immigrants. The Center for Immigration Studies was the policy wing that produced papers and editorials claiming illegal immigration hurt U.S. minorities and the economy.

Through other organizations, Tanton also donated money to suburban groups in the San Fernando Valley and Orange County that proved instrumental in the passage of Proposition 187, a controversial 1994 California ballot measure that sought various penalties against undocumented immigrants and people who helped them. But more than just wanting a clampdown on immigration, Tanton also took issue with the fact that Latinos were becoming a demographic force in the United States.

After reading a 1983 Esquire article in which Miami’s mayor at the time boasted that residents didn’t need to know English to survive in the city, Tanton founded U.S. English with S.I. Hayakawa, the former California senator. In 1986, the organization pushed Proposition 63 onto the ballot — a measure that sought to declare English as the official language of California. It passed with 73% of the vote. U.S. English went on to pass similar measures in 31 other states.

It was through this work that Tanton’s thoughts on culture and race became public. Through a publishing wing, Tanton reissued a translation of “The Camp of the Saints” a notoriously xenophobic 1973 French novel that he called “the ‘1984' of the twenty-first century” for its depiction of the West under siege by swarthy refugees.

In correspondence with U.S. English members originally exposed by the Arizona Republic in 1988, he wondered if Latin American immigrants would “bring with them the tradition of the mordida [bribe]” and if African Americans would suffer under a “Latin onslaught.”

And he fretted that American whites were endangered.

“As whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night?” he wrote. “Or will there be an explosion?”

In other correspondence, Tanton wrote, “I’ve come to the point of view that for European American society and culture to persist requires a European American majority, and a clear one at that.”

Fire department officials in Kyoto said they have confirmed 33 people died in a suspected arson attack in Kyoto. They say 36 others were injured.

The fire broke out around 10:30 a.m. on Thursday at the studio of Kyoto Animation. It took firefighters nearly five hours to extinguish the blaze. Officials say about 70 people were in the building at the time of the fire.

Police say one suspect, believed to be in his 40s, has been taken into custody.

The man was reportedly seen pouring a flammable liquid inside the building before it went up in flames. Witnesses also say he was heard yelling "die" in Japanese.

Police donning anti-riot gear—many with their names and badge numbers covered—used teargas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and batons to dislodge protesters from the streets surrounding the Puerto Rican governor’s mansion in Old San Juan on Wednesday evening. Earlier that day, tens of thousands assembled at the Capitol building before marching to the governor’s mansion to demand the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rosselló. This marked the fifth day of protests and a significant escalation in police violence against civilians. A series of leaked chat conversations involving the governor and other members of his inner-circle provided an unlikely spark that ignited mounting frustrations with the abuses of local elites and the colonial government.

Last Tuesday, a small trove of messages from a private chat between Rosselló and a number of high-ranking officials sent on the encrypted messenger service Telegram were leaked to the press. The messages showed Rosselló and members of his administration using derogatory language to mock political rivals. Although the 11 pages of the chat initially released were damning on their own, Puerto Ricans were shocked by what they read when the Center for Investigative Journalism released a total of 889 pages to the public on Saturday.

The full leaked chat—although there are rumors that more leaked chats involving additional members of the Rosselló team could be on the way—demonstrated the utter contempt and disregard that the political ruling class has for the people of Puerto Rico. The chat paints Rosselló and his inner circle as little more than a pack of overgrown frat boys. The men in the chat engage in all manner of homophobic, transphobic, and misogynist “locker room talk,” calling political opponents putas (whores) and mamabichos (c*cksuckers), commenting on women’s bodies, and insulting feminists and members of the LGBTQ+ community. While this alone is certainly worthy of condemnation, protesters are not taking to the streets because of the profanity in the chats. Rather, protesters are situating the chats within a broader context of structural violence, degradation, and exploitation that mark contemporary Puerto Rican society.

It's a Wasp-class Landing Helicopter Dock and carries amphibious assault vehicles. They're descended from escort carriers and don't land on the beach themselves. (Turns out small boats and helicopters can use way more kinds of shorelines to land on, so unlike in WWII, the Navy doesn't use big landing ships rammed up on gently sloping beaches much.)

I have never seen a deeper pit of self-loathing than looking into the eyes of a Ride The Ducks driver. Imagine someone who can't quite cut it as a children's entertainer OR as a school bus driver. That's your Ride The Ducks driver.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

You've never known true joy until you've shaken a lich stick at someone.